Water Theatre (19 page)

“Someone has to impress on Marina just how bad Hal's situation is.”

“Sure.” The syllable parched the air across the hundreds of miles between us.

I'd been vaguely aware of the engine noise of an approaching motor scooter. As it turned off the road now, onto the track to the cottage, Giovanni got to his feet from where he was lounging on the wall and walked to meet it.

“There's every chance I'll be on a plane tomorrow evening,” I said.

“Have you booked a flight yet?”

“Not yet, no.”

“So there's every chance you might not. Not while you get to spend time with this contessa. Not while there's a chance Marina might come through. We were supposed to be on our
way to the Cascades right now, remember? We were supposed to be fixing up our life.”

A young woman in a scarlet crash helmet and a white cotton dress had parked the motor scooter on the lane. She and Giovanni were exchanging hasty Italian sentences.

“Gail,” I tried after a moment, “I thought we sorted this before I left.”

“
You
sorted it,” she said, “your way.”

“I still don't see what's brought this on.”

“You, Martin. You've brought this on. You're what you don't see.”

With a bag hanging from one shoulder, the young woman was standing just a few yards away, half-listening to what Giovanni was saying but staring at me as if trying to work out who I was.

“The way I figure it,” Gail was saying, “I'm coming in a slow third on your priorities right now.”

“Then you're figuring wrong.”

“Sure, like I figured wrong over Nancy Calloway during the Gulf War? Like I would have figured wrong over the French doctor who just got back to Paris from Equatoria an hour ago and thought she'd give you a call.”

Now things came clear.

“I thought we were through with all that,” she said. “It wasn't going to happen again, right? So why am I surprised? When was it ever different?”

“Look, this is bad timing right now,” I protested, watching the woman in the white dress lift off her crash helmet and shake loose her hair. “I should be back tomorrow. Can't we?…”

“Did you hear what I just said?”

“Yes, I heard you.” Mildly embarrassed now by what she could not help overhearing, the young woman turned away as I added, “I'm sure we can sort this out once and for all when I get home.”

“That's what you said last time.”

“Gail, there are people here. I can't talk now.”

“I've had it, Martin. I can't take any more lies.”

At that moment Stromberg appeared in the doorway of the cottage emitting a loud sigh of exasperation and glaring at Giovanni as the newcomer turned to greet him. “Hi Lorenzo, I'm back. Sam and Jago are coming the day after tomorrow. Is Adam about?”

“Give me a break, Gail,” I was saying. “There's no need for this.”

“You want a break?” Gail snapped back at me. “Here's a break. Let's make it permanent this time.” And she shut down the phone.

“You're English?” the young woman had turned to look at me. There was no trace now of an Italian accent in her voice. I nodded in silence. Again came the shocking sensation of time folding back across itself, smoothly like linen.

And if I was silent it wasn't just because Gail had cut me off in mid-sentence. I was left briefly wordless by the dislocating experience of seeing Marina as she could not possibly be now, but as she might have looked almost thirty years earlier. I was still trying to come to terms with this trick of time when the woman smiled at me and said, “Hello, I'm Allegra. You must be here for the gathering.”

Though she was certainly not aware of it, Allegra and I had met once before, and that meeting had been fraught with all kinds of anguish. At that time Marina had been carrying boxes full of her things from her room to the rusty van parked in the yard outside High Sugden. It was the first time she had been there since her mother's death, and within the hour she would be driving away for the last time, taking her infant daughter to Italy, where they would begin a new life together. Marina had already told Hal that this was the last that he would see of either of them. To me she said almost nothing at all.

More than a year had passed since we had seen each other, and she had not expected to run into me that day. When I tried to approach her, she rejected my offer of help with cold disdain. Then Allegra began to howl from her basket in the van. Having fed and winded her, Marina brought her into the house, where she was still unsettled. So, without consultation or thanks, merely using me as a convenience that freed her to return to the work of clearance, Marina handed Allegra over into my arms. I must have stared at the baby then with something of the same awe that I stared at this young woman now, wondering if the child was mine.

When I first learnt that Marina was pregnant, I had sent a message asking that question, but no answer came. I knew there were a number of artists and musicians hanging about London and the West Country whose claims were as strong as mine, for in what had been a bad time for her, Marina had taken many lovers. My message had said that I was there for
her and the child whether or not I was the father, but she had long since decided to have nothing to do with me.

That afternoon I asked again whether the child I was holding was mine. Marina merely said, “Even if I knew, do you think I'd tell you?” and then turned away.

Now I stared at Allegra once more, looking for signs that this striking young woman was my daughter. I saw only her mother's features mirrored there.

In the meantime, Larry Stromberg had been introducing me as an old friend of the family. “Though I'm not at all sure,” I heard him sighing, “that Marina would want you to have anything to do with him.”

“Really?” Allegra asked, intrigued rather than deterred. “Why not?”

I mumbled vaguely about a rift. We gazed at one another in mutual curiosity. Allegra was already a year or two older than her mother had been the last time I saw her, that uneasy day at High Sugden, and the more closely I looked the more I noticed other differences. Marina's hair had never been as blonde and finely spun, and she lacked the relaxed, sensual grace of this young woman, who had been nurtured in a warmer culture and a different, less inhibited age.

“It all feels like a long time ago,” I said, as though in explanation.

“I'm sure it must,” Allegra replied without malice or mercy. In that moment I felt sure that what she saw across from her was a man some way past his best, shabby with dust and heat, his hair much greyer than black these days – the kind of figure she would have passed without a glance had he not emerged unannounced from her own prehistory.

Her gaze shifted away. “So where's Adam got to?” she asked Larry.

“He's been on retreat in the mountains, but…” Then he broke into Italian, not for the benefit of Giovanni, who sat on the wall sulky and impatient, but for my exclusion. I picked out names
– Adam's, Gabriella's, Marina's – and little else. Allegra's eyes darted my way every now and then as he spoke. Eventually she turned to me and said, “I understand that my grandfather isn't well?”

“He's had a stroke. A bad one, I'm afraid. He can hardly move or speak.”

A frown of dismay shadowed her face. “I'm sorry,” she said. “But the sad truth is I've never given him much thought. He simply wasn't part of our life… of my life.”

“You're right,” I said, “it is very sad.”

She glanced away towards Larry. “Is there any more of that wine, Lorenzo? I think I could use a glass.”

“I'm not sure this is wise,” he replied. “I really think you should talk to Marina before you…”

“Just bring me some wine please. I need to sit down.”

Allegra placed her helmet on the blue table and pulled out one of the chairs. As I sat across from her, she looked away in thoughtful silence to where the late sunlight burnished the poor soil of the olive groves with its glow.

“I'm sorry,” I said, “this must be confusing for you.”

She answered with no more than an uncertain shrug as Larry brought out my glass along with hers. “If your mother kicks up about this,” he fussed, “I absolutely insist it's not my responsibility.”

“I'm not a child, Lorenzo,” Allegra sighed.

“No, my darling, but you've been off the scene. You've no idea what a muddle we're in. And Adam should be here. I can't imagine what he thinks he's doing. We expected him back last night.”

“Well, he's not about to let us down, is he? Do relax.”

Again the restrained asperity of her tone seemed disturbingly familiar.

“Your hair's much fairer than your mother's,” I said, “but everything else about you makes me think of her.”

“Mine's been lightened.” Vaguely she fingered a strand that dangled by her ear. “You know I can't even picture my
grandfather. I used to imagine him as a lonely giant living in a gloomy cave.”

“That's not so far away from the truth right now,” I said, “though he wasn't always like that.” I began to see how this unexpected encounter might be used to some advantage. “Listen, I know your mother's had a very hard time with him, but Hal's a good man. He may have made mistakes, but his whole life has been about building a better world. Your generation is the future he was building it for. It broke his heart being cut off from you and your mother.”

“But then after what happened he can hardly have imagined that…” Allegra stopped herself there. “The trouble is, I don't really know what happened. Just that my grandmother died before I was born and that there was a rift in the family. It must have been very bad to make Marina and Adam break with him as completely as they did.”

“If you really want to know, you should ask your mother. She's going to have to think it all through again anyway… if I ever get to talk to her myself, that is.”

Sensing that much had been withheld, Allegra said, “Are there reasons why you shouldn't?”

“Gabriella seems to think so. I'm afraid there's a lot of history.”

“Between you and Marina?”

“Yes.”

“Bad history, you mean?”

“Mostly, by the end, yes.”

Allegra shook her head. “This is so weird,” she exclaimed. “It's like coming back and finding myself in the dark.” There was exasperation in the way she frowned at me. “As if the darkness had leaked out of the past,” she said, “out of the time before I even existed. Yet I'm caught up in it, not understanding.”

“That sounds like a pretty good description of history,” I smiled back at her. “Hal would enjoy talking to you about that.”

Another frown, then, “I've just remembered,” she said after a moment, “I almost did get to see him once. I must have been fourteen or fifteen I suppose, and I'd had a furious row with Marina…
This really is weird!
I'm not even sure what the whole thing was about now, but I told her I was leaving home and going back to England to look for my grandfather – to see if he would have me. I said it because it felt like just about the worst thing I could say to her.” Allegra gritted her teeth in a wince of contrition. “Oh God, I can still see the expression on her face! And if I'd been a year or two older I might have done it, just for the hell of it. But it blew over, of course, the moment passed… I'd forgotten all about it till now.”

“It's almost a pity you didn't go,” I said. “It might have mended the breach.”

“Is that what you're trying to do?”

“Yes, but it's beginning to feel like a waste of time.”

“Then go home, old thing.” I turned my head and saw Larry Stromberg leaning against the cottage doorway. “I mean, what's to gain from hanging on here? We're well apprised of the situation. Marina must make up her mind what she wants to do, and I fail to see the point of risking further bitterness. Why not join me for a meal tonight in a rather good place I know and then hop back on a plane tomorrow? Let old Lorenzo spoil you a little.”

In that conclusive moment, Larry commanded all the logic in the situation. His smile said as much, and I had no answer. I looked at Allegra. “Will you come with us? There must be hundreds of things Hal will want to know about you – what you do for a living, what kind of education you've had, how you feel about the big questions, what gives you pleasure. He'll want to know everything about you.” But there were other reasons why I was reluctant to let go of her company. “Anyway,” I smiled, “having caught up with you again after all this time, I don't want to let you slip away. And there must be things you want to ask me too,” I added in flagrant contradiction to my earlier reticence. “About the past, I mean.”

Allegra stared thoughtfully at her wineglass. For a moment I thought I'd hooked her. Then she sighed and shook her head. “Thanks, but there are things I have to do. However I will take your advice and talk to my mother.” She drank the last of her wine, pushed back her chair and got up to go. “I think it's been good to meet you,” she smiled, “though I'm not entirely sure.”

I got to my feet, saying, “I can't tempt you?” But for the moment it was clear that I couldn't. “Well, at least I can tell Hal he's got a beautiful granddaughter, one I'm sure he'd be proud of.” She reached for her helmet. Watching her tuck her hair under the strap, I decided to risk a last push. “You know he'd love to see you.”

“If there's love enough,” she replied, “it might happen. You never know.” She pulled the buckle tight under her chin but, even as she turned away, all three of us became aware of someone approaching the house on foot through the dusk. Taking a half-smoked cheroot from between his lips, the figure called, “
Buonasera
, Allegra, I saw your Vespa by the road and felt sure you must be here.”